Daly: Ganim on the road to redemption

Published
1:13 pm EST, Saturday, January 10, 2015

The last time I talked with former Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim was on Aug. 30, 2011. We sat in a booth at the New Colony Diner on upper Main Street in Bridgeport. It was more than a year after he had become a free man, after spending roughly seven years in federal custody for selling the power of his office.

I don't remember what we ate, but I do remember the bill was $19.50. I reached into my pocket for money to pay the bill.

"No," he said. He smiled. "That's what got me in trouble," he said, reaching for his pocket.

I said, "This is on the Hearst Corporation. If we do this again, you pay."

Well, we haven't done it again and we haven't spoken ... until Friday afternoon. He'd called and left a message and a cell phone number. Post reporter Brian Lockhart had been calling around because Ganim, who's been well under the radar the last few years -- with the occasional exception of his unsuccessful efforts to get his law license restored -- has been making some public appearances and is sounding very much like a man interested in running for mayor.

("I don't know him," Ganim said. "I know you." I told him Lockhart was a straight shooter and that Joe Ganim's reappearance was something the public would be interested in.)

A YouTube video is up showing the former mayor speaking at the East End Baptist Tabernacle Church on New Year's Day. The video carries the title "Apology."

And while the video is remarkable on any number of counts - the revival spirit, the incredibly warm reception - it is most remarkable for the fact that Joe Ganim says, "I'm truly sorry" in regard to his breaking the law and the breach of trust with the people who elected him.

That's the first time I've heard it.

On that August afternoon in 2011, we talked about many things -- he was back with his family, for one thing. In fact, he had a little purple mouse, a shiner, under his right eye and he seemed genuinely pleased when he said, "I got this from my son. Playing basketball."

When we got to the nub of the matter, though, it once again got a little murky. He said he was trying to reconnect with people. He and I were never close acquaintances and as a reporter I covered him for a couple of years before being put in a management position.

He was a changed man after Steve Wynn came to Bridgeport in 1991. The bright lights of a potential casino distracted the young mayor. And Steve Wynn drew Donald Trump's attention from New Jersey and, well, that was the beginning of the slide.

At lunch I asked him if he felt remorse. "Oh, yes," he said, his face crinkling in a pained look. I said that many people wanted to hear the words "I'm sorry" come out of Joe Ganim's mouth.

Among them were the people who would decide whether he would have his license to practice law restored.

"The defendant's failure to either explain, or acknowledge any responsibility for, his extensive criminal wrongdoing, or to express remorse for that wrongdoing, was a highly relevant consideration in the particular reinstatement proceeding in the present case," the state Supreme Court stated in a ruling that the former mayor could not get his license back.

In the years after his conviction in 2003, Ganim and his legal team doggedly pursued appeals. It stood to reason that while appeals were pending it would not be a good idea to admit guilt.

Before the lunch in August 2011, the last time we'd spoken was in February 2003 in the men's room outside the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Janet Bond Arterton. It was so long ago. I'd written a column saying that the only person who could possibly offer an explanation for the behavior that had been attributed to Ganim during the course of the trial was Ganim himself.

On Feb. 26, 2003, Ganim took the stand. He was eviscerated by a federal prosecutor named Ronald Apter. It was painful to watch. When the day was over, I stood at a sink in the men's room, rinsing my hands. In the mirror, I saw a door open behind me and out stepped Ganim. He came to the sink next to me. He looked awful. I said, "How are you doing?"

"I'm OK," he said. "How are you doing?" I said all things being equal, I was doing pretty well.

He left the sink, grabbed a paper towel and started to leave. He stopped and turned.

"I'll bet you thought I never read your column," he said. He crumpled the towel, tossed it away and left. Never spoke again until more than eight years later.

Friday afternoon, on the phone, I told him I'd watched the video and it was remarkable. I said his apology was the most dramatic thing I'd heard him say. He chuckled, actually, and said, "Well, I think over the years you've probably heard me say more dramatic things."

He said it was, if not the first, one of the first times he's admitted he broke the law and that he was sorry.

I asked him what had changed that allowed him to say that. Suddenly, he couldn't talk. Not a good time. I asked him if he was living in Bridgeport. He said, "No." He said this was not a good time to talk, but that maybe next week we could talk.

Ganim paid a heavy price for his behavior, a nine-year sentence -- a nine-year sentence when you have young children -- of which he served about seven. The man has definitely paid his dues, including a divorce.

Is Bridgeport -- is Joe Ganim -- prepared for a Ganim run at redemption? In 2011 he told me that the city's black ministers had been good to him after he got out of prison.

"They said `Let us come over and pray with you,' " he said at lunch.

Ganim's appearance at the church on New Year's Day was in part on behalf of a foundation from which he provides scholarship money.

This is a forgiving town. When he finished his brief remarks in the East End, the congregation gave him a standing ovation.